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Objective and main results

This article discusses tensions related to goals and priorities that managers need to resolve in IT transformation programs. These tensions are related to the need for managers to mutually accommodate business and IT interests, and balance short-term operational IT contributions and long-term efforts to revamp the IT-platform.

Main findings:
The authors identified six interrelated paradoxical tensions that managers in IT transformation programs must address:

• IT efficiency vs IT innovation (IT portfolio decisions)
• IT standardization vs IT differentiation (IT platform design)
• IT integration vs IT replacement (IT architecture change)
• IT program agility vs IT project stability (IT program planning)
• IT program control vs IT project autonomy (IT program governance)
• IT program coordination vs IT project isolation (IT program delivery)

The six areas require slightly different management strategies to be resolved.

Summary of practical implications

IT transformation program ambidexterity is a multifaceted concept with multiple areas in which paradoxical demands need to be managed simultaneously. IT managers must address all six identified paradoxes which shape the ambidexterity capability. This is particularly important in dynamic competitive environments.

For managers of IT transformation programs to resolve paradoxical tensions, an IT-business partnering approach is needed. Resolving the paradox between IT standardization and IT differentiation is of particular importance for effective IT-business partnering and enacting IT ambidexterity. A mutual accommodation and blending of business and IT interests is hence needed, and IT should not be regarded as a support function or assuming the role of reactive provider of technologies and systems. This is, for example, important for the understanding of IT as an enabler of both efficiency and innovation, and that a focus on one of the two not necessarily implies sacrificing the achievement of the other.

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Tags

Organizational capabilities IT capabilities Digital innovation IT investments